Right Opinion
The best of conservative opinion and commentary, updated daily.
Friday, November 8, 2013
Obama's O'Care Lies Were Chronicled From the Beginning
Don't you believe that President Obama's lies that people could keep their health insurance plans and doctors were his only lies about Obamacare or that these and the other lies were not demonstrably false when he uttered them. In my book "Crimes Against Liberty," I chronicled Obama's multitudinous lies about Obamacare and many other subjects, from earmarks to tax increases. Please allow me to revisit some of my reporting on the Obamacare lies in light of the recent furor over Obama's dissembling concerning health care.
Lessons for Both Parties in VA and NJ Elections
In an August Washington Examiner column, I argued that this year's governor elections in New Jersey and Virginia would have little precedential significance, unlike some other off-year elections in those states. Boiled down, my argument was that in New Jersey you had a governor who could not lose and in Virginia you had two governor candidates who could not win.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Health Care for the Pushy
So now it turns out Obama knew that 93 million Americans would have their health insurance canceled the whole time he was claiming, "If you like your insurance, you can keep it. Period." Obama lied. Period. "Hope and Change" was actually "A Sucker Is Born Every Minute." Even without the 2010 Health and Human Services (HHS) report admitting that 93 million Americans would lose their health insurance, anyone with half a brain (which is a pre-existing condition) knew that millions of Americans would be thrown off their insurance plans under Obamacare. Under the law, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is to determine what every health insurance plan must cover -- and any plans that don't are illegal.
Obama Health Lie Freaks Dems
Many of the president's supporters are in barely concealed panic over the fact that he didn't tell the truth when he was selling the Affordable Care Act. In an oft-repeated vow, he told the country that "if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what." This was, by any common-sense measure, a lie.
The Bitter Pill of Failed State Tax Incentives
Sales of Incivek, the promising pill introduced by Vertex Pharmaceuticals for treating hepatitis C, are down -- *way* down. The Cambridge biotech company sold just $85.6 million worth of its trailblazing drug in the most recent quarter, a precipitous plunge from the same quarter last year, when sales surpassed more than $250 million.
Obama a No Show at Gettysburg
President Obama will *not* attend ceremonies at Gettysburg later this month marking the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's immortal address. Thank goodness! Mr. Obama has been getting few kudos of late. His Gallup approval rating has slipped into the thirties. But in this, we can applaud his action. It is entirely fitting and proper that he should do this. First of all, consider the expense. Mr. Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg in 1863 by rail. He took Ward Hill Lamon, a U.S. Marshal, with him. Mr. Obama would have to go by caravan with with hundreds of staffers. Just think of the gas.
Election Day Was a Grim Day for New York
How does one explain the victory of Bill de Blasio over Joseph J. Lhota by some 500,000 votes? I have viewed all the learned studies offered up by the psephologists. I have studied the pundits' blah. If there were chicken entrails to be read, I would have read them. Frankly, I am at a loss to explain the election save for the timeless power of boredom.
Bush (Iraq War) vs. Obama (ObamaCare): Who 'Lied'?
When the weapons hunters failed to find stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, so began one of the greatest slanders on a president in history: "Bush lied, people died." Never mind that, in building the case for war in Iraq, President George W. Bush relied on the unanimous opinion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. Never mind that the bipartisan Robb-Silberman commission examined the intelligence on which Bush relied, and unanimously found that "the Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure. ... We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments."
Is Christie the One?
Last August before a closed meeting of Republican leaders in Boston, Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey said, "We are not a debating society. We are a political operation that needs to win." Tuesday night, Christie won. Big time. In one of the nation's bluest states, Christie got 60.5 percent of the vote. His Democratic opponent, Barbara Buono, claims she lost because "Democratic political bosses" made a deal with Christie "despite him representing almost everything they're against. ... They did it to help themselves politically and financially." In other words, they voted out of self-interest. Imagine that. Self-interest in politics.
The Piltdown Man Signs Up for ObamaCare
The language of liberalism is the language of liars. They pretend that the Affordable Care Act was divinely inspired and handed down in the form of stone tablets when everyone who doesn't have his head in the sand knows that it only got passed because Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi browbeat or bribed their left-wing colleagues to get it enacted. Even then, they had to promise that no senator or House member would be lumbered with the worst thing that's come down the pike since unsliced bread. Obama might as well have said with a nod and a wink, "Don't worry, my amigos, this is strictly for the suckers."
Looking for a Different Sort of President
The second terms of the latest three presidents have not been successful. Bill Clinton was impeached after his infamous lie to Americans, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." George W. Bush was blamed for the postwar violence in Iraq. Barack Obama's scandals -- with his accompanying "limited hangout" denials -- are ruining his second term: the growing IRS messes, the Associated Press monitoring, the NSA embarrassments, the Benghazi killings, the Syria bluster and backdown, and, of course, the Obamacare fiasco and the misleading statements about it. What are other common denominators of this collective tenure of our recent presidents?
Clunker Progressivism
Barack Obama's presidency has become a feast of failures whose proliferation protects their author from close scrutiny of any one of them. Now, however, we can revisit one of the first and see it as a harbinger of progressivism's downward stumble to HealthCare.gov. "Cash for Clunkers" was born with Obama's administration as a component of his stimulus. Its fate is a window into why the recovery has been extraordinarily weak, and into what happens when progressives' clever plans collide with recalcitrant reality.
Wednesday, November 6, 2013
Obama's Tour of Lies
The president asks the country to send his dozens of prior statements down the memory hole.
The Big Apple's Turn Left
The new mayor of New York City is a Red Sox fan. According to the rules of the New York I grew up in, I'd expect to see the Hudson turn into a river of blood and Zabar's to close due to a locust infestation before that happened. But if De Blasio's remarkable rise proves anything, it's that the rules can change. A liberal's crazy liberal, De Blasio still waxes nostalgic about the noble struggle of the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, for whom he raised money in the 1980s. He violated the ban on travel to Cuba for his honeymoon with his formerly gay wife, and he often talks as if he's handing out literature in Union Square for the former left-wing New Party, for which he used to work.
Hagel Meets With Belgium's Defense Minister
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was probably briefed on the demonstrations in Tehran this week. The mobs there burned U.S. flags, chanted "Death to America," and celebrated, yes, *celebrated*, the worst humiliation of the United States in the twentieth century: The seizure of our embassy 34 years ago.
The White House Fable Factory
Now that true horror stories of Obamacare's wrecking ball are finally reaching the public, the White House doesn't like "anecdotes." Live by tale-telling; die by tale-telling. On Tuesday, White House press secretary Jay Carney huffed that stage-four gallbladder cancer survivor Edie Littlefield Sundby's personal account in The Wall Street Journal of seeing her health insurance plan canceled and her access to doctors cut off was "sensational." Not a shred of compassion for her predicament. No sorrow for her loss. Must. Attack. Messenger.
Obama Lies Like a Marxist
A week after he signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama went on a road trip to Portland, Maine, to boast and prevaricate about what he had just done. "So now that this bill is finally law and all the folks who have been playing politics will finally have to confront the reality of what this reform is, they're also going to have to confront the reality of what it isn't," said Obama, introducing a lie that has gotten belated, but much-deserved, attention in recent days.
Spreading 'Scandal-Free Administration' Ignorance
The latest and greatest Obama scandal is the disastrous Obamacare rollout, but it has something in common with all the others (besides Obama knew nothing). Some journalists are still brazenly trying to deny -- against all evidence -- that this scandal has any substance at all. The same people who freaked out over President Bush's one sentence in one State of the Union speech that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa are now making excuses for Obama saying everywhere, endlessly, "If you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you." To them, that's not lying -- blatantly, repeatedly, shamelessly. He simply "misspoke," claimed The New York Times editorial page.
The 10th Amendment Is Not a Treaty Violation
After Carol Anne Bond discovered that her husband had impregnated her best friend, the Pennsylvania microbiologist took revenge by spreading toxic chemicals on her ex-friend's car door, mailbox and doorknob. The poisonous prank was mostly ineffectual, inflicting nothing worse than a minor thumb burn. Bond's prosecution, the focus of a case the Supreme Court heard on Tuesday, could do a lot more damage. Defending its decision to make a federal case out of what sounds like fodder for a tabloid talk show, the Justice Department argues that treaties can give Congress new powers -- a theory that threatens to destroy the constitutional division of authority between the states and the national government.